PLato said,"Look to the perfection of the heavens for truth," while Aristotle said "look around you at what is, if you would know the truth" To Remember: Eskesthai

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Supersymmetry

Image: Event display of candidate event for this ultra-rare decay observed in the LHCb experiment

Scientists
at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, have spotted
one of the rarest particle decays ever seen in nature. The result is
very damaging to new theories like the extremely popular Supersymmetry
(or SUSY for short).

Current
knowledge about the most fundamental matter particles (quarks and
leptons, such as an electron) and the forces between them is embedded in
the so-called Standard Model. The particle masses are a consequence of
their interactions with the Higgs field. Exciting the Higgs field in
particle collisions at the LHC recently resulted in the discovery of the
Higgs boson.

The worst thing about the BBC article is the headline, “Supersymmetry
theory dealt a blow” (though that’s presumably the editor’s fault, as
much as or more than the author’s) and the ensuing prose, “The finding
deals a significant blow to the theory of physics known as
supersymmetry.” What’s wrong with it? It’s certainly true that the
measurement means that many variants of supersymmetry
(of which there are a vast number) are now inconsistent with what we
know about nature. But what does it mean to say a theory has suffered a
blow? and why supersymmetry? See: “Supersymmetry Dealt a Blow”?

The graph showing evidence of the Bs0 → μ+ μ- decay. The result was presented Monday 12 November at the HCP Conference in Kyoto (photo courtesy of the LHCb Collaboration).

Today, at the Hadron Collider Physics Symposium in Kyoto, the LHCb
collaboration has presented the evidence of a very rare B decay, the
rarest ever seen. The result further shrinks the region in which
scientists can still look for supersymmetry. See: A rare sight

A typical B0s →μμ decay candidate event is shown above. The two muon tracks from B0s decay are seen as a pair of purple tracks traversing the whole detector in the left image above.